


Spycraft and Cyanide

by Joules Mer (joulesmer)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-06-27 15:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joulesmer/pseuds/Joules%20Mer
Summary: Jim ran his tongue over the small lump on the inside of his cheek, gently probing for a moment before he reminded himself sternly toleave it.Bones was going to have a heart attack and punch him, and Jim wasn’t sure in what order.





	1. Chapter 1

**********

“Welcome back, Captain.”

Jim almost stumbled as he stepped off the transporter pad, a bubble of adrenaline bursting into a crash of relief that he’d actually pulled it off. Motherfucker, what a bitch of a mission it had been. “Spock!” It was so bright white and clean the non-smell after the fetid back alleys of the Romulan outpost made his nose twitch. Jim put a hand on the transporter console to steady himself, ignoring Scotty’s inquisitive glance as he ordered, “Set a course to Starbase Ten and get us out of here. I need to send a priority one coded transmission from my ready room.”

“Should you not…” Through the comm the minor chastisement over adherence to protocol sounded perfunctory and was easily interrupted. 

“I’m fine— I’ll report to med bay as soon as I’ve provided command with my report. Kirk out.” Striding down the corridor, Jim ran his tongue over the small lump on the inside of his cheek, gently probing for a moment before he reminded himself sternly to _leave it_.

Reporting to command only took five minutes, but he was fifteen in his ready room. Channel closed, the pinch of pain in his lumbar region warred with exhaustion encouraging him to just relax into his chair and put his forehead down on his desk. It was cool, the tempered aluminum surface; he’d slept slumped on it before. Despite what he’d promised Spock, the captain was in no hurry to get to the med bay. Bones was going to have a heart attack and punch him, and Jim wasn’t sure in what order.

**********

“Jim!”

The relieved smile on the doctor’s face made Jim respond in kind despite himself, “Bones!” 

“Y’all right?” Leonard took Jim by the elbow, steering the younger man towards a biobed without waiting for the reply.

“I’m fine, Bones. It went without a hitch. Just tired…” An understatement; he was exhausted. Not to mention the imminent reckoning. Jim ran his tongue over the lump again, reflexively; he’d caught himself doing that all week.

When his scanner beeped, Leonard glanced at it, then froze. His eyebrows drew together in confusion, then disbelief, then with a quick glance to Jim’s no doubt guilty face: realization.

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.” Just like that; each word its own beginning and end.

They’d made him demonstrate, on a practice one, before installing the real implant; it had been filled with bitter liquid and dye so he’d know when he was successful. The pain of deliberately biting into the flesh of his own cheek made his eyes water, a taste of blood then a flood of something so bitter it was almost like bile. Jim had gagged and spat, and through it all the Andorian observer had impassively watched. The black stain in the emesis bowl looked like a fallen bird. They told him the real one would be flavorless. 

Now, Leonard’s hands didn’t tremble, although his face had turned a chalky white that was all wrong for his complexion. He held Jim’s head in place with his left hand, while his right carefully manipulated an old-fashioned metal scalpel to cut into the fleshy inside of the captain’s mouth. Slowly, slowly, just a shallow incision at first, then deeper. 

Jim could barely feel it through the hastily applied numbing agent, but a drop of blood on his tongue told him it was almost there. Fingers pressed harder into his scalp. _Don’t move_.

Sure enough, Leonard quickly swapped the scalpel for forceps and gingerly plucked the capsule out of Jim’s cheek. He held it between them for a moment, looking so lost it was Jim who picked up a small tray. The capsule fell with a faint clink and looking down at it between them Jim felt himself shiver despite the warmth of the room.

After a moment, Leonard jerked as if startling awake, setting down the forceps and scrubbing a hand through his own hair before meeting Jim’s eyes, “You didn’t tell me it was that dangerous.” He didn’t offer to seal the small cut in Jim’s mouth. The faint taste of blood was familiar, but faintly nauseating.

“It wasn’t.”

The capsule glistened in the bright light, a small drop of blood coagulating on the tray beside it. “Clearly it was.”

“The Andorians made it a condition of using their intel.” Jim quickly set the tray down on the counter, moving to grip the fabric of Leonard’s sleeves with both hands, “They insisted I have it, but Pike took me aside privately and said actually using it was my discretion, Bones. It wasn’t intended to be a suicide mission; I wasn’t going to use it at the first sign of trouble.”

Leonard didn’t look angry so much as defeated; he twisted to one side even as Jim held him in place. Shaking his head, not making eye contact, he said, “Go home— you need a shower. You’re on stand down for 48 hours. Get some sleep.”

“Bones…”

The doctor twisted away, freeing himself from Jim’s halfhearted grasp. “Not now…” He swallowed convulsively, eyes on the tray, “Just. Not now.”

The med bay doors opened and two red-shirted ensigns from engineering appeared, one supporting the other, “Doc!”

Leonard’s hand was on his scanner before the doors had even closed behind them, striding across the room and starting to bark out orders.

Jim considered himself dismissed.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim lay in bed. 

Awake.

Running his tongue over the small ragged edge inside his mouth. It didn’t even hurt anymore.

He was so fucking exhausted he could cry, but sleep just wasn’t happening. That _look_ on Bones’ face: like Jim had just walked up and slapped him.

The hiss of his door opening brought a momentary sliver of light into the main part of the cabin, quickly cut off. It also brought a presence; Jim raised himself up on his elbows, but as the shadowy figure got closer he allowed himself to relax back into the mattress. Sure enough, the soft sounds of undressing preceded a familiar body slipping into the far side of the bed.

Silence, save for soft breaths, then Leonard’s gravelly-toned, “You awake?”

There was a raspy whine to Jim’s voice, almost plaintive, “Too wired to sleep.”

“I could give you something for that.” It was more of a statement than an offer.

Jim grunted his acknowledgement; didn’t ask.

Eventually, Leonard said, “Was it worth it?”

Jim thought of the hole in space that used to be a planet and billions of Vulcans crushed into one infinitesimal point of singularity and replied, “It was worth it to try.” To die, however...

“It mattered?”

Everything Starfleet did was supposed to matter, but this particular little mission… Jim’s tongue itched to spill secrets in the dark, but instead he settled for the sanitized version, “The Romulans have been restless. Some admirals around command have even started muttering about war in the power vacuum left by Vulcan. We needed to make a credible overture to the right influential Romulan: one rumored to be sympathetic towards treaty talks. The Romulans asked for someone who had been there— actually seen the Narada and the red matter and everything.”

“Someone like you.”

“Someone like me,” Jim confirmed.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I told you it was an intelligence operation. And that I’d be back in two weeks.”

“There’s operations where you spend a couple weeks hobnobbing with Starfleet Intelligence, and operations where they give you some kind of,” the hand wave in the dark dispelled a perceptible amount of air, “cyanide pill.”

“Would it have helped to know it was the latter?”

Leonard huffed a hot and angry breath, before admitting, “No.” The truth always came easier between them in the dark. “Could barely sleep as it was; would have been frantic the whole time if I’d known you had some goddamn time bomb inside you.” A rustling as he shifted, finally reaching out to splay a hand over the other man’s chest. “But, Jim. I still want to know. I don’t…” Leonard’s voice dropped. “I don’t want you keeping things from me. I want to know when you’re in danger so I can keep you alive through sheer stubborn force of my goodwill.”

Jim shifted closer; breathed a question into Leonard’s hair, “Do you forgive me?”

The answer was a long time coming. The silence stretched before a whispered, “Yes,” was followed by a muttered, “dammit.” Another breath, then Leonard pressed a hot kiss to Jim’s forehead and repeated with more conviction, “Yes.”

Jim brought his hand up to cover Leonard’s, experiencing a small thrill of relief when the gesture wasn’t rejected. Softly, into the dark, he said, “Marry me.”

It was impulsive.

They’d never discussed it. Not really.

Settling into being a couple had happened smoothly; easily. No one on board had been surprised when Leonard started emerging from the captain’s quarters every morning, or retiring there at night.

Jim could somehow sense the raised eyebrow in the dark. He braced himself for an explosion, but instead a few seconds of silence were followed by a soft, “Why?”

For a suggestion put forward on a whim, Jim found he suddenly had a lot to say: “Why _not_ , Bones? We’ve practically been together since you almost puked on me over Nebraska, even it was just friends at first. You’ve been living in my quarters for almost a year. I’m happy; you’re happy. Why not get married?”

“You know how that went for me before.” It wasn’t quite a no, but the sour note was strong. 

“But this is _us_ , Bones.” Jim shifted in the dark, rolling onto his side to rub a hand over Leonard’s shoulder, soothing tense muscles as he softly continued, “I love you, and I don’t need a marriage license to prove it, but if we were married we’d get treated differently by the ‘fleet. They still act like I’m single and can just go anywhere and do anything without any strings attached. I want that permanence with you, Bones. I want them to consider our commitment.” He let that sink in, then couldn’t resist adding, “Besides, I think Uhura and Chapel would enjoy throwing us a party, don’t you?”

It was very quiet on the other side of the bed, then a rustling Jim couldn’t place was followed by the sensation of something being pushed onto the little finger of his left hand and Leonard’s drawl, gruff with emotion, “Until we can make it official.”

Jim’s probing fingers met the familiar shape of Leonard’s ring— an old McCoy family heirloom. “Oh…” Inspiration struck him and he climbed out of the bed, calling the lights onto low as he did so. Moving quickly across the room he retrieved a small lock box from his bookshelf, sifting through a charred set of corvette keys, data chips, a pocket knife, a few actual printed photographs, trinkets, until… Swallowing down his nerves, because blue stone glinting back from his own left hand indicated the gesture was likely to be well received, Jim crawled back onto the bed and towards where Leonard had moved up to sit against the headboard, blinking owlishly in the low light.

Jim took Leonard’s hand in his own and repeated the other man’s gesture in reverse. Anxiously, gaze fixed on the silver band on Leonard’s tanned finger, Jim explained, “It was my dad’s— his academy ring. He swapped it for a wedding ring when he got married. It was with my grandmother, when, you know.” A moment of silence, presumably as Leonard contemplated the offering. Jim wasn’t sure why his gaze seemed so heavy; so hard to lift up to the other man’s face. He’d kept the ring ever since he’d found it in the farmhouse in Riverside, feeling closer to his father just for knowing it was in his room. He could never wear it at the academy; too obvious a target for accusations of hubris. Once he had the Enterprise it remained in the box through the wake and eddies of relentless media coverage after Nero. Jim couldn’t wear it, not yet, but for _Bones_...

A hand gently cupped Jim’s chin, lifting until he couldn’t help but meet an emotion-filled hazel gaze. Little fans of wrinkles spread from the corner of Leonard’s eyes as he smiled, then leaned forwards to capture Jim’s lips in a gentle kiss, then pulling back to softly whisper, “Thank you.” 

The engraving on George Kirk’s ring caught the light, and Jim’s eye; he may not have worn the ring himself, but on Bones, now, it felt right.


End file.
